First things First: Constitution!

On this day in 1787, the Constitutional Convention began debating the first complete draft of the United States Constitution.

First Survey Results on 2014 Senate Race

Above are the frequency counts, also frequently referred to as “toplines,” from a survey we conducted Sunday and Monday evenings, which pitted announced Democratic candidate Michelle Nunn against the five most likely candidates to win the Republican nomination. Respondents in this section were selected from those who answered all five of the ballot questions. Number of respondents here is 317 and margin of error is +/- 5.5 points

First, we’ll tell you what we’ve learned about the 2014 Senate election, then we’ll talk about what we haven’t learned.

1. If Michelle Nunn is presumed to be the Democratic nominee, she starts today in the range of 31.55 to 34.70 percentage points. Potential GOP nominees range from 50.47 to 54.26. This does not mean that the Republicans can simply watch the general election and win in a walk-away. A Todd Akin moment, changes in the political environment and a concerted Democratic attack could lead to a weakened GOP nominee. A bruising Republican Primary election and extende Primary Runoff election could also weaken a Republican nominee. For the record, I think the numbers above overstate the Republican advantage.

2. There is no significant difference among the Republican candidates when matched against Michelle Nunn. Part of the Liberal Media-Democratic Establishments talking points is that someone like Paul Broun or Phil Gingrey being nominated would give Nunn an advantage. At this point, that is not borne out. In fact, I’d say this is the most important thing we can learn from this survey.

I personally think it’s premature to run a survey right now, more than a year from the General election, but here’s why I did it: Public Policy Polling announced last week that they were polling over the weekend and I wanted an opportunity to run my survey in the same timeframe, and covering the same questions as theirs to see what I can learn.

Frankly, the PPP results are laughable. Here’s what they said

Nunn 41% v. Broun 36%

Nunn 41% v. Gingrey 41%

Nunn 38% v. Handel 40%

Nunn 38% v. Kingston 40%

Nunn 40% v. Perdue 40%

PPP asked about Party identification, and here’s what they came up with:

Democrat 38%
Republican 39%
Independent/Other 23%

We will spend the rest of the week discussing areas of potential error and how polls can be manipulated to mislead the public, using our survey results and PPP’s for comparison. But I find that party ID number suspect and we’ll hone in on that first.

What I suspect happened is that PPP weighted the results to reflect what they believe is the partisan makeup of the state. Weighting like this changes the results of other questions, and I think their weighting is responsible for the difference between their results and mine.

Campaigns & Elections

Carl Smith, a past Chairman of the Chatham County Republican Party is running for State House District 166, which is currently held by Dr. Ben Watson.

Ben Watson is running for Senate District 1, which is currently held by Buddy Carter; Carter is running for First Congressional District, currently held by Congressman Jack Kingston; Kingston is running for United State Senate for the seat currently held by Saxby Chambliss. And the band played on.

Yesterday, Greg Bluestein wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that State School Superintendent John Barge might be considering making a primary challenge against Nathan Deal, joining Dalton Mayor David Pennington in a mutual political suicide pact spirited challenge.

Lawrenceville City Councilman P.K. Martin will not run for reelection this year.

In Rome and Floyd County, establishment-types will form a ballot committee to campaign for the SPLOST election in November.

The collection of local community and business leaders has worked in the past as Rome-Floyd Citizens for Progress to educate voters on the benefits of the projects connected to a new 1-cent special purpose, local option sales tax.

“Our job as governments is really to inform people about the SPLOST, not to spend taxpayer money to advocate it,” Rome Assistant City Manager Sammy Rich said.

“This is a group that can take on the charge going forward in educating and encouraging people to vote for the SPLOST.”

Acting as a private entity, Rome-Floyd Citizens for Progress would be a ballot committee and must register with the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission.

However, the group will not have to file finance reports until there are contributions and expenditures totaling $500 or more.

The SPLOST committee finalized its recommendation last week, setting the total amount for the overall package at $65 million.